Re: Generating XProc/XSL with XProc/XSL

The titlepage templates mechanism in the DocBook xsls use xslt to
generate xslt:

http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/HTMLTitlePage.html

David

On 2/18/12 12:51 PM, Zearin wrote:
> Thanks Geert. :) 
>
> Anybody else know something about this?
>
>
> —Zearin (Tony)
>
> On Feb 15, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Geert Josten wrote:
>> Hi Zearin,
>>
>>  
>>
>> I have faced a few similar cases:
>>
>>  
>>
>> One was a system in which we needed to do arbitrary document
>> conversions. These conversions would be based on mappings provided by
>> content specialists, without developer experience. We identified
>> various typical actions, like wrap, unwrap, group, suppress, things
>> like that, and specified an XML syntax to express that. We developed
>> an XSLT that generated another XSLT which was able to do conversions
>> according to the mapping expressed in XML. Was quite powerful, even
>> despite the fact that it was still in the 1.0 era. That mapping also
>> allowed to derive another XSLT that could do completeness checks.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Another system involved transforming potentially arbitrary Word
>> documents (saved as Word 2003 XML for instance) to pretty much
>> arbitrary XML. Word documents have distinct features, like
>> paragraphs, styled character ranges, hyperlinks, images, headings,
>> etc. We had mappings expressed in XML that provided instructions for
>> each of such features (matching on characteristics like font styling,
>> style name, etc). This mapping was converted to XSLT using XSLT as
>> well, also all 1.0.
>>
>>  
>>
>> I spoke in past tense, but actually have used the latter for a new
>> project. Was quite general.
>>
>>  
>>
>> So, I suggest you try to identify the functional manipulations you
>> actually need. Find a syntax for that, then write XSLT (or something
>> else) to convert that into XSLT (and/or XQuery/XProc/...)..
>>
>>  
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Geert
>>
>>  
>>
>> *Van:* Tony R. [mailto:tony@gonk.net <mailto:tony@gonk.net>] 
>> *Verzonden:* woensdag 15 februari 2012 16:07
>> *Aan:* XProc Dev
>> *Onderwerp:* Generating XProc/XSL with XProc/XSL
>>
>>  
>>
>> Let’s say I want to write some XSL templates that allow me to map
>> arbitrary XML grammars into SVG.  I know what I want the SVG to look
>> like, and I know that the intended XML grammar is guaranteed to have
>> certain pieces of data that I want to map to SVG using XSL.  
>>
>>  
>>
>> I’ve been in similar situations many times, but even with Oxygen (and
>> I love Oxygen to bits—it’s a fantastic IDE!) it can get tedious. 
>>
>>  
>>
>> I have occasionally stumbled into the DocBook XSL files and seen
>> comments stating “This is a generated XSL file—do not edit!”
>>
>>  
>>
>> …
>>
>>  
>>
>> How does one go about writing XProc or XSL to generate XSL?  I mean,
>> how do you do it /intelligently?/  I’m looking for:
>>
>>  
>>
>>   * human-friendly method of writing the “generator” code
>>   * human-friendly code produced by the “generator”
>>   * flexible, modular code produced by the “generator”
>>
>>  
>>
>> —Zearin (Tony)
>